


w/ Iris

by UrbanCuntemporary



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/F, but i'm tryna take it somewhere real gay, we're gonna see where it goes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-06 05:13:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12810381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrbanCuntemporary/pseuds/UrbanCuntemporary
Summary: She doesn’t.../not/ like Iris. She likes her well enough from the handful of times she’s taken regard of her. She's a general, of sorts. Which is as commendable as it is irksome, given how often it throws a wrench in Cynthia's love life.Still, investing in one person in this joke of a universe is more than her quota, which has been filled, so Cynthia just shrugs and says, “Maybe.”





	1. It's a Very Distinctive Shoe

“Iris,” Cynthia acknowledges without turning away from Cisco’s desk.  
   
Iris huffs out a laugh behind her, “How do you do that?”  
   
“I vibed you,” Cynthia says flatly.  
   
“Really?” and she can hear the interest raise in her voice.  
  
Cynthia snorts, turning. “No,” she nods at Iris’s feet, “Heels. Caitlin’s are usually shorter and clunkier, make more of a-” she clicks her tongue “-sound. Yours sound sharper.”  
   
Iris raises a brow, “You ID’d me by my shoes?”  
   
Cynthia shrugs and swivels back to face the desk. “If you’re looking for Cisco, you just missed him. Went for a coffee run. Or so he says.”  
   
“Yeah I was...You don’t believe him?”  
   
Cynthia turns her head, “What?”  
   
“That he’s going to get coffee. Where else would he go?”  
   
“Knowing Cisco? Probably breached off to go scream at a mountain or something, considering,” she lofts up the two coffee cups staining Cisco’s desk, “I already brought coffee.”  
   
She looks back at the papers, frowning “This Devoe dude is making him go Full Cisco.”  
   
Iris makes a sympathetic sound, “I know it well. There’s actually an angle I’m chasing I was hoping he could help me with but I...whoa…” she trails off, surveying the paper upon papers strewn across his desk “...looks like he’s pretty deep in an angle of his own.”  
   
“Full Cisco,” Cynthia repeats with a nod.  
   
“Damn. Well I know better than to mess with that, so...” she gives Cynthia a nod, and turns to leave.  
   
But she stops, and swivels back on her heel.  
   
“Cynthia…”  
   
“Iris…”  
   
Iris smiles, “We don’t really hang out much, do we?”  
   
“We don’t hang out at all.”  
   
“Right,” and Iris's smile only wanes for a half second before coming back in full catalogue force, “Well, maybe we should change that. You’re kind of one of us, right?”  
   
Cynthia purses her lips.  
   
She doesn’t... _not_ like Iris. She likes her well enough from the handful of times she’s taken regard of her.S he's a general, of sorts. Which is as commendable as it is irksome, given how often it throws a wrench in Cynthia's love life.   
   
Still, investing in _one_ person in this joke of a universe is more than her quota, which has been filled, so Cynthia just shrugs and says, “Maybe.”  
   
And, thinking that’s that, she goes back to her very important task of fiddling with Cisco’s gauntlets.  
   
_Five seconds, ten._  
   
She looks back up. At Iris. Who hasn’t moved. “What-you mean now?”  
   
“Only if you’re not...” Iris looks around the room at the equipment both know neither of them know how to use, and the stacks of equations both know neither of them know how to read, “...busy.”  
   
“Uh-huh, and this has nothing to do whatever you came in here to ask Cisco’s help with?”  
   
“Well, you know you’ve helped the team with enough cases for me to know that you’re a pretty skilled tactician,” she says, not arguing.    
   
Cynthia snorts, leaning back in her chair, “' _Pretty_ skilled'.”  
   
“And since your profession requires…”  
   
“Killing-”  
   
“ _Tracking_ people,” Iris injects, “I assume your investigative skills are above average.”  
   
Cynthia crosses her arms. "You assume correct."   
   
“Please,” Iris says, deflating, “I just need a fresh set of eyes.”  
   
Cynthia’s mouth twists, and she waits a beat, two. But she must telegraph the hell out of her decision because she doesn’t even full open her mouth again before Iris is saying-  
   
“Great!” And beaming, “I’ve got some leads on people who knew Clifford Dev….”  
   
And that’s all Cynthia makes out because Iris just. She just leaves the room.  
   
Cynthia blinks. “Does she really expect me to fo-”  
   
“-And,” Iris’s head pops back in, “You can bring the other coffee if you’d like. It’ll probably be cold by the time Cisco gets back.”  
   
“I-”  
   
And she’s gone again.  
   
“What the fuck…” Cynthia softly questions. She takes a sip of her coffee and hesitates.  
   
Well, all she’d been planning to do was blow in Cisco’s ear while he worked. And she hasn’t gotten a bite in weeks, perp wise...  
   
“Ah, what the hell.” She grabs the coffees and follows.


	2. Inner Issues With A Bad Bitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cynthia and Iris adjust to their impromptu team up.

Iris is bossy.

Well...she’s also _the boss_. But. But Cynthia’s the boss. Like, generally speaking. So Iris’s bossyness clashes with Cynthia’s bossyness. And they can’t _both_ be the boss.

So that’s been a thing.

“ _Okay, Cynthia turn lef_ -”

“-Abubap! You wanted my help on this, let me operate.” Iris’s groan is cut off with a _click_ when Cynthia taps her earpiece. She pauses in the corridor. Listens.

_Five pairs of boots. No, six. To the right. Ugh._

She rolls her eyes and taps her comms again, “Going left,” she relays, turning the corner.

She hears Iris’s grin, “ _I tol_ -”

“Shut it.”

So Iris's angle ended up leading them to a guy who ended up leading them to another guy who ended up leading them to some techy surveillance Cisco-could-explain-it thingie at A.R.G.U.S. which is apparently just as shady and guarded as it is on her Earth. But, much to Cynthia's annoyance, not guarded enough to stop Homebase Flash from having access to its security feeds so Iris can micromanage. 

“Look Cind-” Cynthia grumbles “-thia. I'm not trying to micromanage you." Oh, she said that last part out loud. "You are going to need my help navigating through A.R.G.U.S. They’ve got meta inhibitors all throughout the building. You're basically flying blind in there. Barry barely made it out of there alive last time.”

“You’re assuming that means something to me, a highly trained operative of the law-”

She vaguely hears Iris breathe a ‘ _here we go_ ’, but continues “- You guys have been playing this game for what, 3 years? I was trained by one of the most skilled agents in the multiverse. Starting at age 9. This is just a Tuesday for me-”

“ _DUCK_!”

Cynthia has just enough time to dodge roll out of the way of the barrel of a gun, which slams into the wall where her head was.

“If you hadn’t have distracted me, I would have seen that coming,” Cynthia explains curtly, kicking the agent’s hand away from his walkie. “Can’t have you phoning a friend, now, can we?” 

“ _Oh, because I was the one monologuing_?” Iris argues back. " _More guards_ _coming your way._ "

"I can take them." _B_ _lock, block_. A roundhouse kick to the jaw sends the guard stumbling into the wall. Cynthia leaps after him. 

" _I don't doubt it, but it's a bad idea to draw too much heat when you still have to acquire the device."_

Cynthia groans, "Dammit." Her legs are tight around the agent's neck in an arm bar that he ain't gettin' out of. "ETA?"

" _30 seconds_. _There's a utility closet a few feet up, on the right. Gonna have to book it though. They'll be right on top of you from the opposite end."_

The guard slumps to the floor, unconscious. Cynthia grabs him by the jacket and drags him with her to the closet. Opening the door with her free hand she topples them both inside, with just enough time to close the door gently with her foot. 

 _Just_  enough time: not a second later boots are marching past the door, but they never break stride. Cynthia catches the backend of some gossip about the boss's husband. 

" _You good_?" Iris says after a moment. 

"Yeah," Cynthia answers, rolling the guard to the side and wincing when he slams into a cleaning cart. "Oops."

" _Give it a few more seconds and you'll be good to go._ "

Cynthia nods, but then realizes Iris can't see it. "Copy."

“... _You didn’t kill him, did you_?”

“What? No. I don’t just kill people when the _mood_ strikes, we _do_ have laws.”

" _Well, I figure_ that _, but...how does that work, exactly_?”

It's curious, genuinely, so Cynthia answers. “Well. Being a Collector doesn’t give you the legal right to just kill people. It's not necessarily our call to make. Fugitives are only to be executed once they are returned to Earth 19. After trial. There's a whole process."

" _Huh._ " 

"Collector's can only kill their bounty's if they're explicitly tasked to. Say, there’s a kill-on-sight order on the bounty because they’re too dangerous to risk losing in transport. And of course, self-defense. But any Collector worth their salt should always be three steps ahead of their perp. It rarely comes to that for me.”

“ _And the trial by combat_ ,” Iris supplies. 

Cynthia smiles at the memory; some cute stupid idiot in way over his head. “Yeah, that too,” she says fondly.

A beat. " _Y’all are a weird couple_.”

“Whatever. Where am I going next?”

“ _Oh, are you going to listen to me now? Did you realize you_ -” and then the girl starts singing “ _neaieeeaieaieeeaieeaieeded me_?” then she starts chuckling to herself like that was actually funny.

“What the hell was that?”

“ _Rihanna_!” Iris says like it was obvious. After she doesn't get a response, she says,“ _Oh, come on, you don’t have Rihanna on your Earth?_ ”

Cynthia frowns, “The diplomat?”

Iris is silent for a long, long moment before she says, “ _I’m gonna put a pin in that for the sake of this mission, but I’ve got a lot of questions. Coast is clear._ ” And she’s all business again.

Cynthia does appreciate that about her.

* * *

 

Cynthia is hard-headed. 

And. Okay, so maybe Barry...or her dad, Wally, Cisco, Lin-really anyone who knows her would probably say "Pot, Kettle, Iris," but damn if she knew it was this difficult she would've...

Well. Actually, she probably would have kept doing her. Like Cynthia does. Hmph. 

Maybe they have more in common than they think. 

"Maybe we have more in common than we think," Iris muses over her coffee cup. 

Cynthia's eyes flutter open. For a second they're still clouded over with bliss after the _looong_ sip she'd taken from her own latte. (She's never seen anyone enjoy coffee as much as Cynthia does, she realizes. And coming from her, that's huge). But then Cynthia's eyes focus, and she levels Iris with a look that's become all too familiar in the past 24 hours. 

"Is  _that_ what you've been brewing over this whole time?" 

Iris rolls her eyes, but can't help the light laugh that escapes her lips, "I'm just saying. I mean we're both stubborn-"

"Mm, point," Cynthia nods. Then for whatever reason decides to play ball. "Both badasses."

"Amen," Iris clinks their mugs together in a toast. "And thank you," she smiles. 

"Both hot," Cynthia continues. 

Iris blinks. "You think I'm hot?"

Cynthia rolls her eyes, "Not an opinion," she says simply. Then her phone buzzes. 

"Wait-you have a phone? Like a regular one?" 

"If by ' _regular_ ' you mean an Earth 1 phone, then yes. Well-ish. Cisco whipped one up for me. He's always practically jumping at the chance to make me something. Speaking of..." she trails off to concentrate on typing up a text before setting the phone back down.

From the brief glimpse Iris gets before the screen goes black she can't make out Cisco's initial text. Only Cynthia's response, a simple ' _w/ Iris._ '

"But what's your point?" 

"My point?" Iris frowns.

" _Yes_ , your point, West. About us having shit in common? Was there a point?"

"Oh! Well, of course there's a point," Iris nods, taking a sip of her coffee to buy herself enough time to remember the point. "Maybe we kind of... _clash_?  _B_ _ecause_ we're so alike. So we should keep that in mind. For the future." 

Cynthia is quiet for a second, contemplative. She nods, "It's never wise to go into the field on a different page than your partner. It's why I work alone."

"Because you're hard to work with?"

"When I'm not calling the shots, yes," Cynthia admits. Her mouth twists. " _But_ ," she says, "Cisco...sometimes offers to assist me with a bounty. It's like our foreplay-"

"Oh my..."

"What?" Cynthia frowns, "Is this not 'girl talk'?"

"No, no, you're right, carry on."

"Well," Cynthia continues, jutting her chin, "He doesn't have _awful_ ideas. And...when we agree, we're pretty in sync." 

"So are me and Barry," Iris supplies excitedly. Beat. "Well...meta criminal at least." Beat. "A-and you and  _I_ aren't together." Cynthia raises a brow.

"I just _mean_ ," Iris starts again, "that yes, being on the same page is important, but a good way to start is to know the person. Barry and I have known each other our whole lives. You and Cisco are linked like...telepathically? Through....like...vibess-"

"Don't try to understand it-"

"Okay, well you trust Cisco, right? And he trusts you. We did good today, but we could have done better. Because we don't have that established. Yet."

"Uh-huh," Cynthia blinks. "Are you saying we're going to do more of these little side quests because if I remember correctly I was your second choice."

Iris purses her lips. "Okay, I may have deserved that. But, to be fair, you were dying for some action."

Cynthia squints. "True."

" _And_ , Cisco probably couldn't have done what you did today with those guards."

She smirks. "I've been training him," her smirk widens, "but true." 

Iris smiles back, but sobers quickly. "And, look, Cynthia," Iris wets her lips, "I didn't just mean being on the same page in the field? You know you're not just Cisco's girlfriend, to us. Or, you don't have to be. You're not just...some asset. You've aided us...more than once. That makes you a friend." She reaches out tentatively, then decides,  _screw it_ , and rests her hand softly where Cynthia's rests on the table, even as Cynthia's eyes drop to it like it's covered in pox.

"I may have wanted help on my lead, and I may have wanted Cisco's help to do it, and we may not hang out at all or really be friends yet-"

" _Point,_ Iris-"

"-But I  _do_ think we should be friends," Iris says sincerely. 

She feels Cynthia's hand twitch beneath her own. "Why? It can't just be because I helped a couple times."

"I dunno if you noticed," Iris says, mouth quirking at the corners, "but Star Labs is kind of a sausage fest?"

Cynthia actually laughs at that, much to both of their surprise, if the fact that Cynthia rushes to cover her mouth with her free hand is anything to go by. 

"And oddly enough?" Iris continues, "I was thinking about my friends. Not just...Star Labs friends. Ones from work, ones I've known since college," she shakes her head, "I've got this huge, huge part of my life and it's a secret. From all of them. And I don't think I want to change that but it gets..."

"Lonely," Cynthia supplies. Iris looks up, there's something in her eyes like understanding. 

"Yeah." 

Cynthia nods, then her eyes travel down to their hands, Iris's still resting soundly above hers. Cynthia takes hers back, opting to wrap it with the other around her coffee mug. "Well, coffee is always a start, so." She raises her mug.  

Iris smiles and raises hers as well. "To a start." 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I laughed at myself because Cynthia and Iris do have a lot in common but all that ended up getting listed was that they were hard-headed badass hotties. But it felt in character. Anyway please if you liked it, say so! Gonna try to get the next chapter out as soon as I can.

**Author's Note:**

> Um....just trying to explore the possible dynamic between Cynthia and Iris. But romantic stylezz. We'll get to it. This will get poly though.


End file.
